Useless Upgrades.

[Daniledman]

There is a big problem in the game. It is connected with the fact that some of the upgrades in it are absolutely useless and almost never used by players. I think many have already understood what upgrades in question. I played your wonderful game for more than 700 hours and strongly hoped that in the recent update, the problem of the uselessness of half of the upgrades in the game would be solved. But this did not happen. Therefore, I want to share my modest opinion on upgrades.

I apologize in advance for errors in the text, I do not know much English and I use Google translator.

 

I will divide all the upgrades in the game into 3 types: mandatory, situational and useless:

 

1 CATEGORY: Required.

- Turret Control Systems - Mandatory upgrades, because without them you can not put a lot of turrets and hence the ship without them is useless. These modules are urgently needed on any ship. Moreover, an upgrade to military turrets is much more important than an upgrade to non-military turrets, because as a non-military turrets, 2-3 dismantling turrets are enough to quickly parse debris. But military turrets always need a lot.

- Quantum Hyperspace Upgrade - the MOST mandatory upgrade. Without them, a large ship will not be able to quickly jump between sectors. Wait for 100-200 seconds, not everyone can, it is unbearably long.

- Generator Upgrade - a mandatory upgrade on any large ship, because it allows you to make a ship much cheaper during construction, saving on generators.

- Shield Booster - like a generator, helps save a lot when building a ship. Only one such module of Exotic quality doubles the power of the shield. This is a required module on any large ship.

-Radar Upgrade is a mandatory upgrade, without it the player will not be able to find the yellow sectors that are very important for the gameplay.

 

2 CATEGORY. Situational:

- Object Detector - not always necessary upgrade, it is needed only when we are looking for captured asteroids to make friends with the faction or are looking for caches. Otherwise, this module becomes useful only with the quality of "Exotic" and "Legendary". And between them there is no difference. This is normal? This lower quality upgrade is absolutely useless, since from 10 km even a half-blind person will see a huge asteroid being captured. But in the sector, the distance between the asteroid fields can exceed 100 km. I think I need to recycle the detection distance like this: Common - 5 km / Uncommon - 10 km / Rare - 20 km / Exceptional - 40 km / Exotic - 80 km / Legendary - sector. This will make this upgrade much more useful at any level of rarity.

-Tractor Beam Upgrade - not always useful and needed only when you need to collect mountains of objects after the battle on a very large ship. The difference when installing this upgrade is felt only with Exotic quality and above. It would not hurt to slightly increase the radius of the selection of cargo.

-Shield Reinforcer is very, very expensive. Why? Have you set an extra zero in its value? Very situational upgrade. It is needed only in PvP, because in the PvE torpedoes of the NPS it is not difficult to knock them down with protective terrels. And impulse turrets from the very start of sales of the game in the incentive are very weak and do not cause much damage. I think it is worth reworking this module and making debuffs for its installation less violent. I went through the game several times at maximum difficulty without this module and everything was fine.

- Engine Upgrade - not very useful module. High speed in the game is punishable, because you can break the ship on an asteroid. Yes, and why strongly accelerate the ship, because the NPS fly very slowly. I rarely put this upgrade on my ship, because there are much more useful upgrades. But I do not place this upgrade in category 3 only because in the future patch you promised to increase the speed of the NPS and I hope you will do it

- Adv. Trading System - meaningless upgrade. It does not show the quantity of goods and the full amount of benefits in other sectors, but only in the current sector. As a result, the player in any case will be forced to fly to these sectors and write down the amount of goods on a piece of paper and calculate the benefit. But does he need it? This function adds some kind of mod, but I would like to see it in the standard version of the game. Why not add such a great feature to even upgrade the rarity "Legendary"?

 

3 CATEGORY: Useless.

- Scanner Upgrade - a very useless upgrade. I never put it on my ship. Why is it needed at all if it doesn’t provide practically any important information and takes up a whole slot upgrade? The firepower of an enemy ship can be recognized from 10 km without modules. And this distance is more than enough to fly at high speed past the enemy fleet and learn everything about it. It seems to me that this module is useless for any increase in performance and needs to be rewrited or merged with another upgrade. For example with Radar Upgrade or with Object Detector.

- "Shield Converter" - absolutely useless against the background of "Shield Booster". Although he gives a higher bonus to the power of the shield, it also takes a lot of energy and does not give a backup increase of the shield to 35% when it is destroyed. What makes the converter useless.

- "Velocity Security Control Bypass" - why is it needed at all? After all, with the help of a strafe (space), you can fly away from any enemy and with a speed limit. This upgrade will only be useful in PvP, when another player will chase you using a strafe. Maybe it is worth reviving this upgrade, for example, to combine it with "Engine Upgrade", or to give bonuses to maneuverability or bonuses to the speed of braking?

- Mining System - the most useless upgrade in the game. He's just completely useless. Asteroids with resource veins can be seen for many kilometers, and this upgrade shows asteroids only 3-6 km. What for? Still, the asteroid indicators are no different from the ships indicators, and it just terribly interferes with orientation when the entire screen is littered with red marks, the player rotates the camera in search of enemies, and these are the avorion asteroid indicators. That's just terrible. An urgent need to redo this upgrade. For example, show ONLY asteroids with a resource of more than 30k (huge resource asteroids) and not only in the current sector, but also in the neighboring ones, and not at some distance, but in the whole sector (as done with the Object Detector as Exotic and higher). For example, depending on the rarity of the module, show huge resource asteroids not only in the current sector, but also in a radius of up to 5 sectors on the galaxy map with the quality of Legendary.

- Battery Upgrade - I see no point in this module at all, because you can simply improve the generators. And if the amount of energy produced is higher than that consumed, then batteries are basically not needed. And if the energy is not enough, then you just need to install more generators on the ship or "Generator Upgrade". As a result, the battery upgrade is absolutely useless and not needed at all. I never put it on the ship in all 700 hours of play.

-Cargo Upgrade - divided into 2 types. On both of these species are useless. It is much easier for a large freight to simply add a cargo block to the ship, and then remove it. These upgrades are very weak. Can combine them into one? So that the upgrade gave both a fixed carrying capacity and% to the total carrying capacity? Otherwise, these upgrades are useless.

 

The result is that one half of the upgrades in the game is much more useful than the other half of the upgrades. And it’s very frustrating that they all fall out of the enemy and the hiding places with equal probability. With every passing I have huge problems with the search for "Cointum Hyperspace Upgrade", but upgrades of category 3 I just have mountains. I have nowhere to put them, because they are useless and are not used anywhere (only if they are processed with a key). Is this what you want, dear developers?

 

I offer 2 options:

 

1. To make useless modules useful, greatly reworking their characteristics, and not just to increase the numbers. I described examples of how to make these modules much more useful.

 

2. A simpler option: do not alter anything, BUT in the laboratory add the ability to convert any upgrades into the necessary on the principle of standard study.

For example, I have 3 "Exotic Scanner Upgrade" and 2 "Exotic Mining System". And they can be converted to 1 any upgrade of the same rarity. The player chooses what upgrade he wants to convert unnecessary upgrades. For example, in the "Quantum Hyperspace Upgrade". All conversion rules are the same as in the study. For example, if the upgrades are not five and three, then the required module will be obtained with a probability of 60%, and if it fails, you will receive a random upgrade, which was part of the three initial upgrades. How do you like this idea? This at the same time solves the problem of players in the missing upgrades and allows you to more efficiently get rid of unnecessary upgrades than just selling them.

[Warrax]

Advanced Trading Systems

This module needs to be held as a module upgrade over more than one system for it to show multiple systems.

There is a limit in the module as to how many past systems it will record and identify potential trade routes as a result - thats the whole point.

 

If you remove it, it wipes the data from any past system you have visited.

 

But yes, you are correct - when you first put it on, it only shows the CURRENT system.

[Wanderlust]

I do not agree with what you said about the scanner upgrade. Once I get a legendary one that extends the reach by 400% I use it most of the time. It doesn't only show firepower, but also lets you see the amount of resources in wreckages (and asteroids) from farther away, which helps with salvaging. As well as showing the exact HP of enemies instead of just percentages. One thing it does NOT do, however, which it SHOULD in fact do, is extend the 1 km range at which you detect cargo in NPC ships/stations.

 

Otherwise yes, some upgrades are utterly useless or not balanced.

[BenWinston]

I actually don't agree, but not because I use all the upgrades, but because I make a hell of a lot of gold selling them! And that advanced trading system has been a blessing! Without it, finding a place to get rid of cargo would be a major pain in the butt.

[DivineEvil]

Mostly agree with the sentiment, however I will add my personal thoughts on the matter:

 

Object Detector - The effect range should be kept in realistic brackets - something like 6/12/18/24/32/sector + 2/3/4/5/6/* for permanent installation. Also, it might be justified to even equalize the bonuses to encourage the permanent installation, but players who are used to swap this module around all the time won't like that.

 

Tractor Beam - I consider it a first category, similar to Quantum Hyperspace Upgrade - Neither are needed all the time, but performing their corresponding actions without these is pretty encumbering.

 

Shield Reinforcer - Agree, however the issue is also with the frequency of shield-penetrating weapons as such. Not only the player may never need to use shield-penetrating weapons, but he also rarely will encounter them where they are the issue and the given module is a solution. Given that SP weapons are extremely rare and rather unremarkable compared to their conventional analogues, there's absolutely no reason to sacrifice that much to get so little in return. It costs an absolute ton to sell, and that's as much of a positive as you can get from it. It's a Useless category item.

 

Engine Upgrade - The system module itself is fine, but it has little use considering the generic nature of engine boost, that essentially negates most of the need for conventional thrust. Engine boost has to be nerfed in one way or another, so that players will have to rely on base thrust and welcome the use of this upgrade.

 

Trading System - More useful than you seem to describe it as. It is good as long as it displays the discount/markup ratio, which the player can use to buy and sell for best prices. Since commodities do not degrade and can be stored anywhere, its unnecessary to run specific trade routes. When the rarity level allows to sort lists, it also adds a lot of uses, like quickly finding the places to sell the goods you currently carry.

 

Scanner Upgrade - Agree, but the solution is to make something dependent on it. For example, scanner can be made necessary to acquire lock on distant targets, and without it you cannot send the fighters nor launch torpedoes

 

Shield Converter - Not entirely useless, because it can be placed on small ships to improve their survivability much better than Shield Booster for the same system slot. Since power demands are percentile, it wont take much energy from a ship that needs less of it. However, it doesn't make sense, that the backup charge is placed on the Booster, rather than converter. I personally would prefer Booster being just that, maybe having a chance to reduce damage against particular weapons, but the Converter should have the backup charge and maybe some other options, like mitigating a portion of incoming damage at the expense of ship's energy storage. In fact, it may not have any shield capacity  bonuses at all as long as the functional nature of the shield is changed significantly. Also should be renamed to Shield Modulator.

 

Mining System - This upgrade is an artifact from the times, where rich asteroids were unrecognizable from all others until you'd have this system. One solution it to somewhat complicate the mining again and require this module for efficient harvesting, but allow players to scan nearby asteroids to see if they're rich without it. Another option is to add bonuses to mining turrets (damage, efficiency, range) that this module can give from permanent installation.

 

Battery Upgrade - The upgrade is fine, but the power management in the game is non-existent. I have already commented on that in another thread.

 

Cargo Upgrade - Also more useful than described. A percentage bonus is amazing for massive cargo haulers, and flat bonus can give the cargo capacity to a ship, that otherwise has none.

[Kamo]

Velocity Security Control Bypasses, or as I call, "Weee-boxes", are a Situational upgrade. When crewing a ship on a station which does not have engineers, it's very welcome. It also allows to "unhinge" the ships' AI to make the ships go faster at low jump ranges (Titanium and especially Iron-tier).

The fact that it now only works with permanent installation nerfed it beyond belief though: before, it was fairly cool to hotswap it. However if boost ever gets nerfed, the Weee-boxes are going to be almost mandatory for anyone looking for speed.

 

Engine Upgrades are borderline Useless-tier... they should be upgraded with increased Inertia Dampener power to be worthy, because it's much more interesting to brake fast than to go fast, since the boost allows for it and it's really easy to get great thrust values, especially on bigger ships (at Cruiser class and beyond it was easy to have a 160 m/s² thrust, which is just peachy great).

 

Oh yeah, put any Efficiency bonus on Mining Systems and they'll become put-on-every-slot-like-it's-M-TCS mandatory.

[unbekannt1984]

Hi,

 

I've taken a look at the Shield-Upgrades... Well, although there are 3 different Upgrades for shields, the most important seems to be missing. What would you think about an upgrade that gives your shields some regeneration, but drains some power?

 

I was thinking about something like:

50k Shield-Regeneration per second

5 GW Powerdrain

-50% Hyperspace Recharge Power (to compensate for the Powerdrain a little)

Maybe +25% Shield-Capacity (Well, currently 2 out of 3 Upgrades have capacity, why shouldn't this Upgrade get capacity?)

 

This Upgrade would allow stations and cruisers to sustain some incoming damage, on the other hand they loose a TCS and have a little less DPS. What do you think?